An ex-Eton pupil who became an international star in The Wire before winning plaudits for his portrayal of serial killer Fred West is to play Richard Burton in a new drama.

An ex-Eton pupil who became an international star in The Wire before winning plaudits for his portrayal of serial killer Fred West is to play Richard Burton in a new drama.

Dominic West was relatively unknown before his heavy-drinking Baltimore murder detective, Jimmy McNulty, made the HBO crime drama a box set sensation.

It had been running on television in the US largely unnoticed for years before it was picked up on DVD.

Now West – who impeccably masked his well-spoken English to play both the Baltimore detective and West Country murderer West – will play the 12th child of a Port Talbot miner who became one of the most famous men on the planet.

Helena Bonham Carter will play Liz Taylor, the precocious child star whose beauty lit up the silver screen for decades, in a one-off BBC 4 drama about their tempestuous love affair.

But the casting of Burton and Taylor – which will be set in 1983 when the divorcees were re-united in a US stage revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives – has not gone down too well.

Tom Rubython, author of the encyclopaedic Burton biography, And God Created Burton, said: “I have to say I think the casting for this new drama is hopeless.

“I can’t see Bonham Carter as Liz Taylor and I definitely don’t see Dominic West as the far more rugged, far more charismatic Richard Burton.

“I think you have to have a big budget movie to portray Taylor and Burton.

“I would go for someone like Russell Crowe as Burton as he has the same physique and same sort of looks.

“As long as he got the accent right he’d be OK.

“But I also wonder why Michael Sheen was not considered. He is absolutely brilliant at playing real life characters.

“And coming from the same town he would have no trouble with the accent.”

“Taylor’s beauty, intensity and sensuality are crucial, and for a petite actress to contain those traits is no common feat.

“Burton, while not the largest man, needs to be rugged, powerful and uncompromising in his masculinity.”

In a recent search for actors who could play Burton, Indiewire suggested Crowe, as well as Clive Owen and Gerard Butler.

Speaking of her new role, Bonham Carter, 46, said: “Elizabeth was 51, still every inch a star , still beautiful and they still needed each other but this was professional.

“They were doing Noel Coward’s Private Lives on stage playing a couple who used to be married. People wondered if they were still in love and whether they’d be playing themselves or their characters in the play.”

She herself admitted she looks “nothing like” the late star.

She said: “It's about capturing the essence of them at a particular time.

“She was and continues to be a fascinating woman. There's no one comparable around now.”

Burton and Taylor were paid more than $1m each for the limited run playing Coward’s Elyot and Amanda, a couple divorced after a turbulent marriage to rediscover each other years later when each had a new, younger spouse.

It was not liked by the critics.

Frank Rich in the New York Times led the appalling reviews in May 1983 by claiming it had “all the vitality of a Madame Tussaud’s exhibit”.

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